


Placeholder

by Glassdarkly



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Pre-Series, Precognition, Psychological Horror, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 08:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5284130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glassdarkly/pseuds/Glassdarkly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you go down to the woods today....</p><p>Actually, wait. Why would you do anything that stupid?</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> First posted to the Nekid Spike Livejournal Comm Halloween Nekid Numbers challenge in October 2015.
> 
> Prompts were: Spike with either Wesley or Drusilla/bones/woods/spanking

"Bad Miss Edith. Bad, bad, bad!"

Drusilla's hand impacted on the doll's china buttocks again, and yet again. 

The last 'bad' became a shriek of fury, that echoed through the forest and set the roosting crows rattling from the trees. 

A moment later, the doll went flying through the air, to land face down in a stand of fading bracken. Drusilla, meanwhile, began to sob.

Spike was standing nearby, under the shelter of a tall spruce, smoking a cigarette and thinking wistfully of the bright lights of Prague (still a long night's drive away), and waiting for whatever it was that had made Drusilla want to spank Miss Edith to be forgiven.

It always was in the end. 

But as Drusilla's sobs grew louder and more heartbroken, he frowned (too much noise not to attract unwelcome attention - these primordial forests weren't as empty as they seemed) ground out his smoke beneath his boot heel and made towards her, walking at first, but breaking into a run when she began to wail like a banshee and claw at her hair and clothes. 

By the time he reached her, there were three parallel slashes across the front of her black dress, exposing pale skin that oozed droplets of blood (each as precious as rubies, in Spike's eyes), from three parallel bloody grooves. He caught her flailing hands in his. Her long nails were bloody too.

Their eyes met. Drusilla's were yellow and fierce. She snarled at him, as if he were trying to snatch her prey from her rather than save her from herself.

"Dru, stop it!" Spike kept his face human, even when she tried to sink her fangs into his throat. 

They wrestled together on the hard ground, bodies entwined in a violent parody of sex, tumbling across the forest floor, over moss and stones and through piles of fallen leaves. 

Spike would have found it a fucking turn-on, truth be told, if it weren't for the thought of ruining his duster with all this rolling in the dirt, and if Drusilla weren't biting and tearing at him like a rabid she-wolf. Yelling in her face that he was only trying to help just seemed to make her worse.

It was this sodding forest, Spike was sure of it. The countryside always had brought out the worst in her.

"Bloody knew we should've stayed on the autobahn," he growled, while she hissed and snarled and raked at his face with her nails.

But in the end, the forest came to his rescue, when, what with all the thrashing about, her head impacted hard enough on a tree root to knock her out cold. 

Spike felt a little dazed himself by this time. 

After a moment, he recovered enough to stand up and brush himself down (his duster wasn't torn, thank fuck), then to get Drusilla into a more comfortable position, head pillowed on a mossy bank, the duster in lieu of a blanket, until she woke up.

That done, he settled beside her and lit another cigarette. The sun had set. In the darkness, the trees were blocks of deeper darkness. The silence was unnatural - not broken even by the tiny rustlings of small nocturnal animals foraging through the leaf litter. 

Why was it so bloody quiet?

Spike shuddered, unnerved despite himself, then yelled aloud when he turned to find Drusilla staring right at him.

"Dru?" he cleared his throat to disguise the annoying tremor in his voice. "You all right now?" 

Drusilla was human-faced again, but her huge pale eyes were lost and empty.

"This is a place of pain," she moaned. "Why did you bring me here?"

"I didn't sodding bring you here," Spike protested. "Was you wanted to come. _Oh Spike_ , you said, _let's make a den in the woods and spend the day there. It'll be so much more fun than a stupid old motel_. "

But he knew it was pointless reminding her. Drusilla was lost, somewhere he couldn't reach her. And if he didn't find her soon, he'd be lost right along with her. 

Being desperately in love with a madwoman could be a right pain sometimes.

Spike kicked bad-temperedly at a pile of fallen leaves, sending them flying in all directions. The bleached ribcage and skull of some small animal rolled out of the pile and came to rest by his foot. Spike brought his heel down on them with a satisfying crunch of bone.

"All right, Dru. You win. Place of pain, yeah? Now, how do we get out of it?"

Drusilla's eyes had taken on an eerie phosphorescent glow. She smiled a smile that was nothing like her own.

"First, we make an offering," and she pointed down at the crushed bones, "like so. Then we give it what it wants."

_It?_

"Which is?" Spike asked, because what else could he say?

Drusilla laughed. "Pain, of course. Miss Edith's wouldn't do, no matter how hard I spanked her. It has to be your pain, or mine. It says that you can choose."

Spike glanced over his shoulder into the darkness under the trees. For a moment - just for a moment - he felt something lurking on the very edge of his perception; a presence. Older than the forest, colder than the stones, more evil than any vampire ever sired, bubbling and boiling like a cauldron of pure malice.

A shiver of fear ran down his spine. 

Which was bloody embarrassing, him being what he was, and pissed him off no end. 

So when Drusilla intoned, "Choose," he gave whatever-it- was that was skulking under the trees the old two fingers and told it in no uncertain terms to fuck the hell off.

"Come on, Dru." Spike snatched up his duster and thrust his arms into the sleeves. Black leather settled around him like folding bats' wings. He grabbed Drusilla's elbow and began to steer her in the direction of the car, ignoring the feel of eyes, like swords dripping acid, stabbing into his back. "Sooner we get out of these woods the better." 

He'd expected Drusilla to fight him, but to his surprise she came meekly, pausing only to snatch up Miss Edith from her resting place in the bushes as they went past. 

"Naughty Miss Edith," Drusilla cooed, as Spike bundled her into the car and fastened her seatbelt (in case she had any funny ideas about jumping out). "How careless of you to make your pretty dress all wet."

"Yeah," Spike muttered. "Careless."

Back on the road, he put his foot down. The forest zipped past the windows, dark and forbidding, but up ahead Spike could see the lights of a village - the last one on the German side of the border. 

He began to feel better. Maybe there was a bar? He could do with a drink before the overnight run down to Prague. 

But, just before trees gave way to neat houses and gardens, Drusilla suddenly leaned over and bit his ear, so hard Spike nearly ran the car off the road.

"Don't think you can escape me, vampire," Drusilla hissed, still in a stranger's voice. "I will have what I want - first, very soon, from the woman you love, and then, in the fullness of time, from you. From beneath you...." 

Just as suddenly, her eyes rolled up into her head and she slumped, like an unstrung puppet. 

Spike felt blood trickling down the side of his neck. He slammed on the brakes and rolled down the car window.

"Who the bloody hell are you?" he yelled, into the night. 

There was no answer, save a vibration through the soles of his boots - a trembling deep underground, so faint Spike almost thought he'd imagined it.

 _Aus der Tiefe verschlingt es_.


End file.
